Actress Shelley Duvall passed away today, July 11, at the age of 75. She died in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, due to complications from diabetes.
Best known for her role as Wendy, the wife of the unhinged ax-wielding writer played by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Duvall had mostly disappeared from public life in recent decades. In 2023, she took on her first film role since 2002’s Manna From Heaven, in the small indie horror The Forest Hills, which has yet to be released.
When asked by the New York Times last year about the project, Duvall said, “I wanted to act again. And then this guy kept calling, and so I wound up doing it. If you ever do a horror film, other horror films are going to come to you, no matter what you do.”
Born in Forth Worth, Texas, Duvall got into acting by way of director Robert Altman, whom she was introduced to by chance in college. Altman became Duvall’s mentor and cast her in her first film, the 1970 comedy Brewster McCloud. She went on to star in seven Altman-directed films, including Nashville, Thieves Like Us, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Popeye (in which she was Olive Oyl to Robin Williams’s famous sailor), and 3 Women, for which Duvall won the 1977 Best Actress Award at Cannes. She also played Pansy in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, starred opposite Steve Martin in 1987’s Roxanne, and stole the scene as a rock journalist in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. It was around that time she met Paul Simon, whom she went on to date until he left her for her friend, Carrie Fisher.
Today, Duvall’s iconic role in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining is her claim to fame, but at the time, her performance was met with mixed reviews, even landing her a Razzie nomination for worst actress. Still, it made her a household name, and she enjoyed a successful career as an actress and later, a producer, starting her own production company and creating forward-thinking children’s entertainment like the Peabody Award-winning Faerie Tale Theater—which featured many of her A-list friends including Williams, Christopher Reeves, Carol Kane, Bud Cort, Bernadette Peters, and Mick Jagger. She met her life partner of 30 years, the musician and actor Dan Gilroy, after starring in the 1990 Disney Channel movie Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme.
Departing Los Angeles for her native Texas in the 1990s, Duvall went on to live a quiet, peaceful life with Gilroy and their many pets. She began to struggle with her mental health, though, reportedly becoming paranoid and convinced that people were out to get her. She appeared on a controversial 2016 episode of Dr. Phil, telling the television host, “I’m very sick. I need help.” Many in Duvall’s life, including Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, slammed the episode, calling it exploitative.
Duvall’s whimsical personal style, in combination with her waifish figure, stick-straight hair, and saucer eyes, earned her the nickname “Texas Twiggy”—and made her an enduring cult favorite across generations. Sarah Lukowski, an Austin-based copywriter in her 20s, runs a popular Shelley Duvall fan account on Instagram and befriended the late actress toward the end of her life. “She was such an enigmatic force,” Lukowski told the New York Times. “I mean there are actors today like Anya Taylor-Joy and Mia Goth who have similar features and acting styles, but there’ll never be another Shelley, you know?”
Gilroy confirmed the news of Duvall’s passing in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us,” he said. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”